Archival collections tend to reflect communities and individuals who hold positions of power. While the Black community in Spokane has been here for over 140 years and has made rich and meaningful contributions to the region, it can be challenging to find those stories within the local archives and museums. Having representation in archives is one way to help honor and understand the past, and to have your community be visible, represented, known, and celebrated. During this event, we emphasized to participants that history is made up of everyday stories and that we wanted to celebrate every story.

The Spokane Public Library, the Carl Maxey Center, and our community partners collaborated to create a democratized collection-building practice. By leveraging the strengths of five institutions, we were able to host the event and create a Digital Archive that we will be able to sustainably maintain and grow in the future. By using Creative Commons licenses and encouraging participants to create their own metadata, we empowered participants to maintain copyright and descriptive control over their items.

The Digital Archive that the Spokane Public Library is hosting for the Carl Maxey Center is a place of community connection to help showcase the rich stories of Black Spokane. During the event, we digitized close to 600 items, including family photographs, the charter for the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, a scrapbook from a historically Black church, business cards, and the entire run of the local African-American Voice newspaper. This project has become a model for how to create and sustain a community-driven archive to help highlight underrepresented voices in your community.